My friends nicknamed me Double Dragon because I had nightmarish visions of dragons and have two brains. I wasn't supposed to have two brains, but that's life. My real name is Peter-Paul Duo.
When I was a child I was regarded as developmentally handi-capped. It took me longer to learn how to communicate with other people than it does most folks. I had difficulties learning to read, write and speak. Not to mention the difficulty of learning to walk and move in general. With two brains the fight to control a single body is a 24/7 battle.
I sometimes "lock-up" or hesitate on issues due to the difficulty of deciding what do given two brains. Inaction is the result when the brains don't agree on a course of action. What looks like inaction is actually an internal power struggle between brains. Whichever brain is stronger at the time wins. When the brains do agree what to do, I can act quite powerfully. A surprising portion of the time the goal of what to do is consistent for both brains, so I can get by in life.
I had the great fortune of meeting someone called professorX early in life. He was an elderly gentleman of considerable power.
ProfessorX told me I was both Jean Grey's and Wolverine's nephew according to the genetics study done by Dr. McCoy. But I'm not sure I believe him. I think he just told me that to make me feel like part of a family again. I don't know where I'm from originally and I think the professor wasn't able to find out either. I was referred to the professor by foster parents living in Canada after a nasty fist-fight with another child.
I told ProfessorX about my dreams or rather nightmares. He said not to worry, they were just dreams. The nightmares involved me being a two- headed dragon fighting a bird made out of fire. It was a horrific battle that consumed the Earth. I always got toasted by the bird in the end, and the bird went on to consume the entire planet. Then the dream ends. The professor said it wasn't uncommon for telepaths to have vivid dreams.
My earliest memories are of living in an underground complex with my mom. Later I learned it was a facility for developing inhuman weapons. One day when I was quite young my mom disappeared, I never saw her again. They had me working as cleaning staff in addition to my training. According to ProfessorX I am one of the most endowed people he has ever met. Endowed, but not that powerful. Most mutants have a single mutation and sometimes a secondary one. I happen to have a handful because they were designer made.
By eves-dropping carefully on conversations at the weapons facility I learned I was supposed to be a counter-agent to something called Weapon 11. They wanted something that could match Weapon 11's capabilities. I also learned that I was "failed" product. Deemed not useful due to the insanity of having two brains to deal with, also regarded as having low intelligence and poor motor skills. My "weapons systems" were all substandard. I only had 1" claws between the fingers. Not useful for dealing lethal blows. Super-healing took too long. Laser vision didn't work at all, and I ended up with mostly ordinary eyesight. Being able to teleport barely worked, requiring a substantial amount of concentration. I did have a bonus of some super-speed capability which the researchers didn't understand how it arose, it was unintended. Even though a failed product, I was used for a while as an experimental object for something called process refinement before being put to use as child labour. I had a high-strength metal alloy bonded to my skeleton, but it wasn't adamantium. It was something called orange-steel. They wanted to test the process without wasting adamantium or a more successful weapon on it. Telepathy and tele-kinesis was deemed non-working. Telepathy actually worked but I managed to hide the fact.
One day I overheard that the project was ending. I was to be destroyed along with a number of other weapons "materials". There was a huge fight among lab workers when it was announced that all weapons materials, with no exceptions, were to be destroyed. That meant that living, breathing individuals were going to be killed. I was lucky in that being part of the labour force I managed to befriend a lab worker or two. I persuaded the lab worker not to give me a lethal injection at the project end date, but rather to lightly sedate me. I awoke in the incinerator room, which was piled with dead bodies. But there was no-one around at the time, so I was able to escape the room easily. They hadn't bothered to place a guard on a room full of dead bodies. I eventually found my way to the surface. Mostly by climbing air-ducts, it was about seven or eight stories underground underneath a railway factory. The railway factory made a great cover for a weapons research program. But I think it wasn't too well thought out about what would happen if weapons escaped. It was obviously an older facility which had been retrofitted. I was able to further escape by hiding on a nearby train. I don't know if anyone else made it out. How I ended up in Canada is a bit of a mystery, but I can remember travelling on a plane at one point during my escape. I spoke only a few words of something resembling "Chinese" and there was Asian writing on the walls of the complex where I was housed. I was only about four years old when I escaped. One thing I noticed which was strange was that while writing in the complex had been Asian, writing above ground in the railway factory and elsewhere was Germanic. It's possible the factory was located in an eastern European country. One speculation is that it was a rogue operation not sanctioned by a government. A company of some kind setup to produce and sell weapons.
Dreams
One night when I was a teenager, the dream changed. I managed to swallow the fire bird whole and keep it from destroying the Earth. But then I consumed all the life of the Earth in the process, and everything becomes dark, cold, and empty. Then the dream ends. My nightmare, if the fire-bird survives it destroys the Earth, if I survive the Earth dies a cold death.
Mom and Me
"mom" was the one responsible for looking after my general needs when I was an infant. My mom disappeared when I was so young that I can barely remember anything at all about her. She was thin, petite and had brown hair. Nobody knows what happened to her, not even the people running the facility. One day she just disappeared. It's rumoured that she was eaten by one of the animal weapons they had housed at the facility, but there was no evidence to back up that theory. She was responsible for cleaning out several of the cages. I slept beside my mom in the warehouse area on a lower shelf next to some pipes. I was hid from sight under burlap bags during the day while my mom worked.
Cleaning House
Once I was about three years old, one of the facility managers came up with a way that I could earn my keep. First they got me involved in simple cleaning tasks, later more sophisticated things.
It wasn't a hard job. After a little bit of coxing I was able to follow what the manager meant. At the end of the work shift, sweep the floors then take the trash to the trash room. Nobody thought to look after me really, outside of my use as an experimental tool. Nobody fed me, and I took to eating garbage. You can imagine what the garbage at a weapons facility was like.
Escape
I owe my escape to a lab worker who is probably deceased now. He gave me the means to flee the facility. A meager amount of money and an airline ticket to a place called Canada. I was supposed to try and meet someone called James Howlett. But I never got that far. The lab worker gave me information on the location of the Howlett Estate.
Seeing the "outside" world for the first time was quite an experience. I'd spent all my days in an underground facility where there was no real concept of outside. Day and night was determined by a light-switch which was switched off for some shifts to conserve power and on for other shifts.
The train was heading west in Europe.
I took an airplane from somewhere in Europe to Canada. I wanted to get as far away from the facility as I could. However when I got to Canada I was stopped and picked up by social workers at the airport, it having been discovered that a four year old was travelling without parents. I think now it was the company that tipped off social services.
From the perspective of the organization running the facility, if they found out about my escape, there were good chances they would leave me alone to avoid a political scandal and other consequences. Any apprehension of self would come covertly and secretly. It could cause a lot of problems starting a large scale operation to track down and capture an escaped weapon. After all, from their perspective what could I do ? My capabilities were rated as pretty limited. It's not as if I was going to laser people with laser vision. I had some combat training but nothing a regular G.I. couldn't handle. I looked a little different, but not far outside of the ordinary. I wasn't a prized possession of the company, only material scheduled to be destroyed misplaced at some point. As an escapee I would be a low priority to recover.